my raging leftist side is emerging

Yesterday was an usually intellectual day. First, the guy in town whose job it is to teach people how to use the very complicated voting ballot asked me about the Electoral College, ballots in the US and whether I thought voting should be mandatory or not, like it is in Perú. Eventually, I was going off in rapid-fire Spanish. I think I kind of scared him because I was getting a little passionate about it all. Then at night, as I was waiting for my parents to call me for FIVE HOURS, my host sister´s new fianceé(there hasn´t been a wedding yet)/husband(she lives with him so people call him her husband) and I had a long conversation about fishing and the decline of fish populations, agriculture and the organizations of farmers in the area, irrigation and the institutions involved, why the US hasn´t signed Kyoto yet (I went in depth on that one while pointing out that we haven´t signed a lot of important conventions, like on human rights) and about the Peruvian presidential elections which are coming up on April 9th. Oh well to that whole mission of Peace Corps that volunteers are ambassadors of the government´s good-will. I like to keep it real. Government and the people, very different entities. I think my host family was giving each other looks like, "wow, I guess the China is passionate about politics."

But it´s all cool. Apparently, my host parents are voting for Ollanta Humala, the most leftist candidate who has a chance. Even though one daughter is voting Lourdes Flores, the moderate conservative female candidate. However, I honestly don´t have a strong opinion on the Peruvian elections because I just don´t know enough about the candidates. Ollanta Humala is coming through Piura this week and will maybe be stopping in town. I gotta go tell him: "hey, if you become prez, don´t kick out Peace Corps, aight? we cool?" Just kidding. That might give Peace Corps a heart attack. And that would be really bad of me to talk to a presidential candidate, because I do believe that it could be manipulated politically. I gotta watch my back! Right now the three candidates still seem to have an equal number of votes. Peruvian law mandates that the winner must have more than 50% of the vote, so there will most likely be a second round in which the top two candidates will fight it out.

So I didn´t mention a critical part of my work plan: to form a committee comprised of municipal authorities, schools (directors, teachers and maybe students), the governmental health centers, parent´s organizations and other social organizations (Mother´s clubs, Fishermen Associations, etc.). That will be the bulk of my work, since as you may imagine, that will take a lot of time. Basically, it´s institution-building or creating "social networks" or whatever terminology you want to use. We´ll see how it goes.

I´m starting to work on this coalition building goal by meeting the people at the Centro de Salud (Health Center) in town. Since my Becará teachers are starting on the issue of hygiene, it will be great to get the involvement of the Centro de Salud, which is in my town, as well as the health post in Becará. Possible activities related to the objectives they have been proposing include having the kids go to the Centro de Salud to research the most common ailments in the community and learning more about issues relevant to their own little world. We can also get guest speakers in classes or have people come to give a talk or training to the teachers before they start lesson planning.

In other news, it is a BITCH to get to Becará. Fishing season has started a little early. As such, the fishermen are gone. Since fishermen take up secondary jobs in public transportation during the off-season, there is a huuuuuuge lack of public transportation right now. After waiting an hour for a collective car to pick me up, my neighbor who was waiting with me got picked up by a truck delivering ice to keep octopus fresh. They offered me a ride, too, so I finally was able to get to the school. Along the way there were a TON of people on the right side of the street waiting for transportation.

It was a lot easier to get back since I finally realized that there´s a collective car stop near the school that leaves towards my town. No more waiting on the side of the street with my handkerchief over my head for shade wondering what I´m doing here in the desert for 35 minutes anymore! In the car, a mom asked me if I was teaching at the school. She told me that her daughter had come home from school and told her that, "There´s a girl who looks very ´China´ with extremely white skin who is really pretty coming to work in the school." And so they´re all wondering what I´m doing there. So I guess I´m famous in Becará, thanks to the chatterbox kids!

They said this day would come after 3 months

And, indeed, it did. The day when I would feel like everything is coming together.

I´m really excited about the prospects of my primary project. Finally, I have a clear idea of what I´m actually going to be doing for the next two years! So on Friday I got this brilliant idea from the NGO that Cactus works with: use schools as a development agent. Soon, I will be working to form commissions of teachers from all 10 primary schools in the District. This is important because there are three types of teachers, each with a different teaching strategy: the "unidocente" who teaches the ENTIRE school him or herself, the "multigrado" who teaches multiple grades, and the "polidocente" who teaches one class and one grade. The commissions will have the responsibility of doing things like performing a big diagnostic of the community, working on a District-wide environmental curriculum, planning environmental projects and involving the community. The last two commissions will be the focus of my work. Basically, through the schools, I will be working with the community on conservation and other development issues (nutrition, hygiene, self-esteem, gender equality, etc.). Meanwhile, I will be working with that big fishing caserío, Becará, as a pilot program. I have been told by two different people that this is a great idea because there are many organized and potentially active associations and groups of women, men and youth in that community. On one Saturday in the future, I will be going around Becará with the secretary of the Municipality, who also happens to be a leader in the the caserío, to meet other leaders that I can work with in the future. The teachers at the school also seem pretty interested in working on environmental issues and with the community. They are eating up the information I have been translating and adapting for them from this wonderful book called "Developing an Environmental Curriculum in Schools," which I got in the mail thanks to Peace Corps. I´d be completely lost without that book.

The director of the environment program in Perú also came to visit my site on Thursday after a regional training conference we had in Piura. It was reassuring that he thought my strategy was good. This is important to me since my project is different from the other environment volunteers´ projects because I am working in a "community" of 15,000+ people, with 10 primary school and that covers a huge geographic area. It´s a lot larger in terms of my target population -- some volunteers are teaching in one school with 30 kids total -- and I don´t have any counterparts that will actually be working hand in hand with me. When each volunteer presented his or her project, most people´s counterparts spoke more than the volunteer about the project or were the ones that came up with the work plan. I don´t even think my counterpart could explain the work plan right now, haha. But I am definitely not complaining -- I did ask for a "difficult" site with a lot of independence, after all, as my director reminded me. He also asked me if I would be bothered in the future by not being able to form any intimate bonds or observe the personal development of a group of people, like most volunteers will, thereby losing out on the "real Peace Corps experience." I told him I think I´ll be able to see that happen, and if I don´t, as long as I see changes and believe that it was more or less effective, I´ll be happy. So no dramatic vignettes about this kid I worked with or that woman who I developed a bond with in the future. Maybe.

At my site, my director and I had a hilarious conservation with my host parents in which they proceeded to complain about how their son is in love so he comes home late instead of studying so they lock him out and he bothers the whole family with his knocking and whistling all night long and how their eldest daughter is anti-social and doesn´t want anything to do with potential lovers and suitors and how they tell her she has to talk to me every once in a while and how there are kids in town who are alcoholics and the fishermen booze up during the closed season when they can´t fish and are bored. All in all, it was a pretty good sketch of my life in town.

After he left, I rushed back to Piura because my friends convinced me I had to join them to see "Walk the Line", the Johnny Cash movie, on its first day out in the theatre...even though I had already been out of site for 3 nights due to this training. It´s true that there is such thing as "out-of-site guilt" when you feel guilty for not being in site, even if it´s for something reasonable. So at almost 9 at night, I guiltily returned home, but not before calling my host mom to tell her I´d be home later than planned, since she´s a worrier. She was the only one there when I got back. After serving me dinner, she told me so much about the family I never knew: that they lived in Lima for 5 years, that my host sister once had to attend University classes in Piura until 10:30 or 11 at night so my host mom had to nervously find a place for her to stay in the City since she couldn´t safely come home that late, that another daughter once overslept on the combi and by the time she made it back home my host mom was in tears, and that the "padrino" called my host dad that day to tell him that he had to start working that very same day...so he´ll be fishing for the next two or so months. Just like that. Gone the same day. What a crazy life. What a miserable job. They thought he was going to leave around April 15th.

Anyway, things are looking good. Except Rese lost the MSA elections by less than 300 votes, perhaps due to some election fraud by the "winning" party. The capacity of Michigan´s campus politics to mimic U.S. national politics never ceases to amaze me.

i knew it all along!

I never doubted that Kerry truly won the 2004 election....

Read this, from the Miami Herald.

That´s settled, if I don´t like the Democrat running for Prez in ´08, I will be fighting to fix the electoral process.

tidbits

Today, a crazy man on a bench told Prima that she needs to watch out for the "communists" because they´re watching her, and that they´re everywhere in our department of Piura.

Around the same time that happened, I immersed myself into the Peruvian ocean for the FIRST TIME. I can´t believe it took me half a year! It was "rico," as Peruvians would say. Fish were jumping around me everywhere at every moment. Cactus got really burnt.

I am sitting in on an ornithology research seminar to pick up more ideas on what I can do with kids about birds. As we went through equations and calculations, I was reminded of how nice it is to be OUT of school.

Speaking of which, school has officially started in my District. Unfortunately, this is the closed season for fishing, so the fishermen can´t send their kids to school until mid-April, when they start to make money again. So only some schools are actually functioning right now.

This morning I went to a teachers´ planning workshop at an elementary school in one of the caseríos. As the director introduced me, he asked me to join him in front of all the teachers. And then he sat down. I was totally unaware that they wanted me to lead an environmental curriculum development workshop. I had just been planning on seeing what they wanted me to do in the future. So I babbled a lot about my proposal and environmental education. After some comments by the teachers, we decided to choose the themes they wanted to discuss during the school year. I´m going back to the school 3 times in the next two weeks. I will meet first with 1st and 2nd grade teachers, then 3rd and 4th grade and then 5th and 6th grade. Whew, that was a sticky situation turned better. I´m excited to work there! The teachers seemed very laid-back and eager to incorporate the environment in their lesson plans. They understood and were passionate about the importance of enviro ed, which will make my mission a lot smoother.

Now I don´t know if I should continue working with each of the TWELVE schools in my district individually like that or form a committee of all teachers of certain grades within the District. I will probably do the latter. However, it´s a lot of coordination!! I am super busy now. Too bad Peace Corps is pulling us away from site two days next week for a training. Awful timing.

unexpected little acts of friendship

Today was such a sweet, simple day. After spending all day locked in my room poring through a really helpful tech manual on developing environmental ed curriculums, I decided to go on a little jog/walk through the farms again today. On the way, I passed the hostel where my PCV friends stayed during the Mangrove Festival. Three girls who were about 12 years old asked where I was going and if they could join me. Of course I said yes. After getting permission from their mom, they came with me. First, we stopped by the canal so one of the girls could clean a gash on her knee that was dripping with blood. I´m not really sure how clean that water is, but it´s better than not cleaning it, I guess. As we chatted and strolled down the farmland-lined path, newly green thanks to a new planting season and recent rains, I learned that they´re not from this town. They learned how to say 20 Peruvian names in English. Then we ran for all of 30 seconds. They were wearing flimsy flip-flops (and out of shape). Oh well, making new friends is much more important than a healthy heart. When we stopped, they pointed to a beautiful tamarind tree, which I didn´t recognize. Tamarind trees are taller than most trees growing around here. They have many small bright green leaves, which turn brighter with the 6PM summer sun descending behind. Then we stopped and threw rocks at the tamarinds, hoping they would fall. Since I´m a lot taller than they are, they kept on asking me to shake various branches. We did this for about 10 minutes. My aim isn´t all that good. I learned that tamarinds actually look like brown peas! Inside the "pea pod" the fruit looks just like a dried peach -- and tastes like it, too! Yum.

As we headed back since it was growing dark, a mototaxi sped by with two of my friends from the Municipality in it. They waved furiously at me and stopped the mototaxi. "Come with us to Bernal!" So I hopped in, we dropped off my little friends at the entrance of the farmland, and I went to Bernal for the first time. Bernal was about a 15 minute mototaxi ride from where I got picked up. We arranged to get a band for the Mayor´s birthday party in May. I sat in a house that I thought looked really beautiful. There were plastic flowers and elephant statues and a tree that reminded me of Autumn in Michigan or New Jersey and kitchy stuff everywhere. And then I wondered whether my taste in interior decoration is turning really tacky after just 6 months in Perú. After our business was done there, we took the long route home to stop by a big town to eat cake. I wished that my counterpart had arranged my homestay to be with one of these two women instead of the family I have. I like my family and think that they´re good people. However, they would never randomly bring me on a little trip like that and then buy me cake. That´s partly why I´m in my room way too often.

Onto a different subject, I had a cultural identity crisis today. I read an insert in Newsweek written by an "Indian-American" author who won a Pulitzer Prize or something. She was writing about being Indian-American and growing up being loyal to the old identity but hoping to fit into the new one. At first, I read and thought it was kind of interesting. I could identify. But it´s all the same old first generation experience stuff I´ve read before. Then she ended with something that made me gasp aloud. She talked about how the Indian part of her is critically linked to the presence of her parents in her life. And how when they pass away, she will become more American than Indian. And I realized that it is the same for me. I had a small panic attack. I really wanted to call my sister and talk to her about this revelation, that I really had realized my whole life, but never thought about so bluntly. I mean, I always wondered how I´d manage to have my kids grow up speaking and listening to Mandarin. I solved that problem when I decided not to ever have kids. Now I´m thinking more about how my IDENTITY will be really different when I´m old. I will be more American than Chinese. That´s the reality. I´ve never really cared about aging as much as I do now.

puppy love

There is a little golden red dog laying by my feet, even though the computer center is one of the few places in my town where you won´t find dogs ever. He is my family´s dog, Cookie. He decided to start following me around town. Yesterday, he celebrated International Women´s Day with us and was running around the stage as we were decorating. This morning, he ran (and peed) inside the Municipality office until I picked him up and took him out, walked back home, and only returned when he wasn´t in sight. I guess it´s easy to fall in love with me since everyone else kicks him, shouting "¡PASA!", and gives him the cold shoulder. I pet him behind the ears and even let him sit on my lap when he looks relatively clean.

So my presentation to the teachers and directors of the District went well considering that I couldn´t use my beautiful PowerPoint Presentation (AGAIN), this time because the computer was with people who arrived late due to heavier than usual rainfall. My PowerPoint was my strategy to seem really professional and knowledgeable, yet fun. Oh well. At least I wasn´t too nervous since I didn´t have to do it in the auditorium with a microphone.

The surveys we got back have been giving me mixed opinions, and I´m kind of lost as to which direction I should head. Many teachers complained about lack of classroom resources, and in one caserío, this included no bathrooms. They also confirmed that poverty affects their mission, although lack of motivation of students and parents also ranked pretty high on the list. I was happy to note that many primary school teachers were willing to devote 10+ hours to environmental lessons, and asked for teacher trainings. Maybe it was sampling bias, but they seemed very receptive to introducing an environmental education program. Except for the teacher of "religious studies", who didn´t seem too enthused. I was also asked to attend a curriculum development workshop at a primary school of one of the bigger caseríos next week. Another teacher also told me that she lives in Vice and could help me with the Program!

The night before March 8th, International Women´s Day, we organized a march incorporating a competition of "antorchas." I didn´t know what that was until I arrived. It´s like paper lanterns, but they use reeds and either a special type of paper or plastic bottles. Since I was one of the two judges of that competition, the "antorcha" of a women in a bikini using re-used plastic bottles won first prize. I was a little biased towards the creative use of re-used material. Second place was to a house that had a picture of women working in a factory on the side, third place went to a boy who made a sign with a poem thanking and giving due credit to women, and then there were stars, a huge cake, a chicken, a face that said "Women in Action!" and plain plastic bottles. It was one of those nights when I just felt so accepted and integrated into the community, and touched by the smallest gestures. I got to walk in the front line of the march because the Regidora told me to hold the Peruvian flag with her. The kids also went crazy for me and my camera that night. I translated 30 Peruvian names into English for them. It´s been a really good week!

Picking up steam

First, I recommend this article to anyone who would already agree with the fact that our President is violating human rights through his support of torture, and that that is an evil. Comparisons using Hitler and the Nazis are usually trite and misused, but the author of this article looks within and reflects on the role of German citizens during the Holocaust and now on our role as American citizens. Having to explain American life to foreigners on a daily basis makes me more sensitive to US government actions and abuses. It doesn´t make me proud to be an American when I´m eating dinner with my Peruvian host family and a picture from Abu Ghraib pops up on the nightly news. How am I supposed to explain THAT?

Anyway, this is the longest I haven´t written in my blog for. Partially it was because of Carnaval, which was way more fun than Christmas, by the way. At least, we partied longer. The parties during Carnaval are called "yunces," which involves climbing up a tall tree to tie plastic buckets or children´s clothes onto its branches. If there are no trees (like in Cactus´ site), you first cut down a tree from elsewhere and re-root it at the party site. Eventually, the band starts to play the Carnaval song. That´s when everyone stops dancing a tame version of Marinera with flags in their hands, stops dumping a huge fistful of baby powder on each other´s faces and hair, and starts walking around the tree in a big circle. One by one, someone takes an ax and starts hacking at the tree a few times. Then someone else goes. The first time I went to a yunce I left the circle because I would have a hard time justifying being an environment volunteer and then putting an ax to a tree. Screw cultural integration. When the tree finally falls, there is a HUGE mob rush towards it to grab whatever you can. It´s amazing how excited people can get about plasticware. It´s like a gigantic natural piñata, except the prizes aren´t a mystery.

On Tuesday of Carnaval, which is the big day, there were about 10 yunces in my town. I went to one. They get kind of old after a while or one, plus I had a lot of work to do. There were two groups, green and red. During the day, they had teenage girls holding big banners running around in red or green clothes with a marching band. They came into the Municipality and I danced Marinera with an employee who gets really into dancing since he´s from Catacaos, not here. So he dances for real, for fun, not tame and lame. We were the only ones dancing and everyone who works for the Muni came to watch us, of course. Then later in the evening, the groups ran around with men and boys dressed in their respective colors riding donkeys or horses. Some wore masks. Monkeys, devils, and I even saw a bunny. As they ran around town, we threw water on them.

Carnaval involves molesting your neighbor in a loving way. You throw water, baby powder, paint and, in Lima and Cajamarca I hear, garbage on people passing by. I liked the water and baby powder getting thrown on me because it was so damn hot! However, what a waste of water. My water conservation campaign is going to be a bit tough.

At night, there were a bunch of popular bands that play music hip to the region: cumbia, salsa, marinera, huayno. My host family and I went until 3am.

As part of our International Women´s Day Festivities, and as part of my strategy to work with people who are not my counterpart, I ran a workshop today for women on self-esteem. I was hoping to get at least 3 women for the adult workshop and 3 for the young women one. I mean, you have to have some self-confidence in the first place to admit through your actions that your self-esteem isn´t healthy. Well, the women came 1.5hrs late and the young women came half an hour late, so they became one group with a total of 10 women. Not bad. I think it went well...it´ll probably be a workshop I do a lot in the future, so it was good practice. The women were really sweet and looked pretty interested in what I had to say -- when my Spanish was good, at least.

It was also good practice public speaking in Spanish before my big presentation tomorrow for all the directors and teachers of the 13 or so schools in the District. I´m nervous, especially since I just realized that I´ll be using a microphone, which I´m never comfortable with, English, Spanish and definitely not Chinese. This is also my first introduction to my target audience: teachers and school directors. After thankfully realizing that I don´t have to teach kids, but rather should work on teacher trainings and supplemental projects with kids, I feel a lot better. Before joining Peace Corps, I was clear that I didn´t want to be a teacher. This also keeps my schedule flexible. However, I feel ready and my PowerPoint is really pretty because I peppered it with my photos from the Mangroves and of kids in the town. Hopefully there won´t be another blackout tomorrow when I´m scheduled to present!

I´ll be conducting a survey of teachers about their students´ barriers to learning, student backgrounds, resources in the classroom, difficulties the teachers have, the teachers´ interest in an environment program, etc. It´ll be interesting because each population center in the District is different from the rest. Also, I spoke to the man who runs the statistics office in the teacher´s department of the entire province. He expressed his concern to me about the parents´ roles in education. In particular, he thought the biggest problem was that parents send their kids to school either too early or too late. He pointed to datasheets reporting that a 21-year old was in a 1st grade class (same as the US, you´re supposed to be 6). There were other statistics showing similar surprising facts. I wonder how correct his statistics were. Often, numbers on a datasheet misreport reality. Hopefully, through the surveys, I will get a better understanding of the reality of the classrooms and of these kids and teachers. To me, the biggest problems is that some classrooms have a student:teacher ratio of 50+:1. Some teachers teach all the elementary students in a school. That sounds like a nightmare, and must be an unhealthy learning environment.

In other news, Christmas finally hit me! I got Mrs. Field´s cookies, Snickers cookie bars, a bio of Miles Davis, What´s the Matter With Kansas, a yoga intruction book, a calendar and NY Times crossword puzzles for senior citizens (ie easy to read big print and easy to solve). Plus, I got more of my CDs from home and my mom bought me Weezer´s Pinkerton album, which I lost and missed dearly. Prima also brought me a tasty souvenier of manjar blanco (kind of like caramel) from a trip. I should also be receiving a package (3 months after it arriving in Perú) from my aunt with lots of clothes in it very soon. Merry Christmas to everyone!